BAFTA Film Awards 2019

Predictions

Best Picture

2018 DGA Awards winner is Oscar frontrunner for Best Director

On Feb. 3, the Directors Guild of America will reveal its pick for the best film helmer of the year at the 70th annual edition of its awards. The five DGA nominees are: Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”), Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”), Martin McDonagh (“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”), Christopher Nolan (“Dunkirk”) and Jordan Peele (“Get Out”).

All but McDonagh are in contention at the Academy Awards. If one of the four double nominees wins with the guild, they are all but certain to take home the Oscar on March 4 as well. The DGA aligned itself with the Academy Awards calendar in 1950. Since then all but seven of its winners for Best Director have repeated at the Oscars.

Although the DGA does an outstanding job at anointing the eventual Oscar winner, it is less sure-footed at previewing the five Oscar nominees. In its first 15 years, there were anywhere from four to 18 DGA nominees. From 1963 to 1965, the guild went with five before upping that to 10 for the rest of the decade. Beginning in 1970 it enshrined the number of nominees as five. Since then there have only been five years where it previewed the exact lineup of Oscar contenders; this year was not one of them.

There are usually one or two differences between the slate selected by the 16,000 plus members of the DGA, which includes helmers of TV fares and commercials, and the choices of the 512 members of the directors branch of the academy. That was the case this year as the Oscars snubbed McDonagh in favor of Paul Thomas Anderson (“Phantom Thread”).

Last year, Damien Chazelle (“La La Land”) won both awards. At the DGA he faced off against three of his Oscar rivals — Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”), Kenneth Longergan (“Manchester by the Sea”) and Denis Villeneuve (“Arrival”) — as well as Garth Davis (“Lion”). The latter was bumped out of the Oscars by Mel Gibson (“Hacksaw Ridge”).

In 2016, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“The Revenant”) made DGA history by becoming the first back-to-back winner. He prevailed at the guild over Tom McCarthy (“Spotlight”), Adam McKay (“The Big Short”), George Miller (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) and Ridley Scott (“The Martian”). He went on to win the Oscar over McCarthy, McKay, Miller and Lenny Abrahamson (“Room”) who bumped out Scott.

In 2014, Alfonso Cuaron (“Gravity”) won this award over Paul Greengrass (“Captain Phillips”), Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”), David O. Russell (“American Hustle”) and Martin Scorsese (“The Wolf of Wall Street”). He repeated at the Oscars against McQueen, Russell, Scorsese and Alexander Payne (“Nebraska”).

Back in 2013, only two of the Directors Guild of America nominees — Ang Lee (“Life of Pi”) and Steven Spielberg (“Lincoln”) — also reaped Oscar bids. The other three DGA nominees — Ben Affleck (“Argo”), Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty”) and Tom Hooper (“Les Miserables”) — were snubbed by the Oscars in favor of Michael Haneke (“Amour”), David O. Russell (“Silver Linings Playbook”) and Benh Zeitlin (“Beasts of the Southern Wild). Lee won the Oscar race.

That disconnect between the DGA and Oscars was unprecedented. Affleck won over the DGA voters while his film, “Argo,” became the third to take Best Picture at the Oscars without a corresponding Best Director nomination. The others: “Grand Hotel” (1931/32) and “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989).

Affleck was the seventh DGA champ who did not go on to repeat at the Academy Awards, following in the path of these Oscar also-rans:

Be sure to make your Oscar nomination predictions so that Hollywood studio executives can see how their films are faring in our Academy Awards odds. Don’t be afraid to jump in now since you can keep changing your predictions until just before winners are announced on March 4.

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